Navyblue designed a ‘stand-out’ packaging for the Smokehead whisky
30 January 2009 | By Popsop Team
Family-owned business Ian Macleod Distillers, producing a wide range of blended, malt and aged blend whiskies, as well as premium gins, rums, vodkas and liqueurs, decided to offer a new product for this category, but with a distinctly contemporary style.
Having rejected ‘heraldic’ crests and hand-drawn Scottish scenes, managing director Leonard Russell was eager to speak the language of a younger audience.
Solution
He decided to take a product from the distilleries Islay after noticing a following for Islay’s strong, smoky whiskies amongst younger people. Taking the product premise and the Smokehead name, the designers from Navyblue consultancy created a whole brand identity for the whisky, giving it a style which simultaneously breaks the mould of whisky packaging, whilst retaining cues to heritage and provenance.
A tactile embossed and debossed outer tin features an array of adjectives that describe the characteristics of the drink inside — ‘robust’, ‘outrageous’ and ‘vigorous’.
Uniquely, the main label is placed on the rear of the glass bottle, so that these same descriptive terms reflect through the spirit itself. While Smokehead’s styling is clearly contemporary, the designers used a traditional wooden block letterpress to create the packaging’s typography. Text on the bottle reading ‘Islay Single Malt Scotch Whisky’ is set in a copper colour, alluding to the copper pot stills used in the distillation process.
Results
Since its launch in 2006, Smokehead has gained worldwide distribution contracts and sales of the product have doubled in tree years.
Smokehead has recently won the Scottish Field Whisky Challenge Gold and the Wine and Spirit Design Awards Gold, Best Dark Spirit Trophy and overall Trophy for Design of the Year.
Popsop.com
Tags: alcohol drinks, whisky
